Beyond the Water’s Edge
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
While Senator Clinton may be standing firm on the war, her husband seems to be losing it. Speaking in Dubai, Mr. Clinton said America made a “big mistake” in invading Iraq. He listed the Bush administration’s not sending in enough troops, its dismantling the Baathist power structure, its failure to unite the country, and so on. In other words Mr. Clinton just about listed every single criticism of President Bush that is being hurled around other than saying he lied about WMD and Saddam should have been left in power.
Mr. Clinton couldn’t add those to the list because when he was in the White House, he and his officials were constantly warning of the threat Saddam posed. President Bush and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld have been recently quoting back to now anti-war Democrats and Clinton-era officials their statements on Saddam. They never missed an opportunity to warn of how Saddam threatened America’s safety. That was why the Iraq Liberation Act, making it American policy to support the removal of Saddam, unanimously passed the Senate, overwhelming passed the House, and was signed by President Clinton. As Secretary Rumsfeld reminded reporters on Tuesday, after President Clinton signed the act he then ordered four days of bombings against Saddam.
The only anti-war stance open to Mr. Clinton, which he’s taken, is criticizing how the liberation of Iraq was conducted, which strikes us as a particularly sad approach for a former president. Mr. Clinton did concede in Dubai that America has done some good things in Iraq, such as the removal of Saddam, the holding of elections, and the ratification of a new Iraqi constitution. By our lights these amount to making the way the administration has carried out the war a success. All the more hypocritical of the former president to join the anti-war crowd.
With Mr. Clinton politics doesn’t end at the water’s edge – he was deep into Arab territory when he started carping about his own country. The bad news for Mrs. Clinton is that her husband’s remarks are a reminder to Americans of why they voted for a Republican over four more years of Clinton-style populism in Vice President Gore and, four years later, Senator Kerry. Mr. Clinton’s latest outburst will make people wonder whether a vote for Hillary in 2008 will also be a vote for Bill.
